


Autoclave

by SnailArmy



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Songfic, other content warnings apply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24241813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnailArmy/pseuds/SnailArmy
Summary: a series of vignettes about bad people having a bad time. (except for nastya. she has rights.)(content warnings in the notes before each chapter)
Relationships: The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Comments: 11
Kudos: 75





	1. Marius

**Author's Note:**

> "I was in Alaska when I read about the discovery of a life-form that can not only survive an autoclave (The instrument used for sterilizing surgical instruments; It's supposed to kill any and all bacteria on the tools), but which seems to really enjoy the whole autoclave scene: at temperatures fatal to all other life forms, this bacteria would begin to breed.
> 
> Naturally this got me to thinking about people whose hearts involuntarily pulverize any good feelings that come within a city block of them. " -John Darnielle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: non-consensual science, memory loss

_hand me your hand_

Marius stared down at where his right arm used to not be. In place of the familiar absence was a _presence_ , a metal thing with wires and gears sticking out every which way. It was heavy, heavier even than he remembered his flesh arm being. Tentatively, he lifted the arm and flexed the hand. It responded to his nerve impulses, which was fascinating in its own right, but the way it moved was just slightly.. _off_. The joints bent too sharply, and what passed for tendons jerked and clicked with each shift in position. 

It didn't help that he had no idea where it came from, where he was, or what had happened in the past - how long had he been out? The last thing he remembered was a giant robot, and even that felt fuzzy. Now he seemed to be in the cargo bay of some sort of ship, surrounded by boxes of every description. He stood up, and noticed an envelope sat on one of the crates. His name was written on the front in ornate cursive script. 

He grabbed it instinctively with his left hand and was halfway through the familiar struggle of opening it when he remembered. Cautious for the first time in his life, he lifted his new right arm and levered up the envelope's flap. Just like that, it was open. 

Marius let out a short, genuine laugh. He was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and a prosthetic of this quality was wildly expensive (he should know; he checked). If it meant that he could finally play the fiddle again, give proper hugs, _become a proper doctor_ , that was all he needed to know. With all the callous excitement of his newfound relief, he reached into the envelope to retrieve its contents. 

The metal hand was stronger than he expected. As he closed his fingers around the paper, it seized up, crumpling the contents and nearly poking a hole entirely through them. Marius' heart sank as he examined the now-ruined photograph. Himself, smiling, arm wrapped around - someone. The delicate finish had been scratched beyond recognition by the coarse metal of his new fingertips. 

He swore, softly but wholeheartedly, and finished the job of crumpling it up. There were too many people left behind him. What difference would a single memento have made?


	2. Tim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: eye trauma, medical, carmilla

_let me look in your eyes_

Tim stared at the mirror. The contours of the face staring back were utterly alien to him. The scruffy beard he had grown in the three years at war was gone, clean shaven with a surgeon's precision. His hair was long and soft, like someone had washed it. He didn't recognize the smell of the shampoo. There was no dirt anywhere on his person, not even a smear of mud or the smallest speck of moondust. All the years of fighting, of killing, of _surviving,_ washed away. 

And his eyes. 

He couldn't bring himself to look at them directly, but they were there. Watching him in the mirror, always just out of sight. They weren't his eyes. Warm light brown, the faintest hint of green around the edges. He doesn't remember much of the surgery, but he knows what he heard, just before the anesthetic kicked in. "I found him the prettiest eyes."

They weren't _his_ and they were _wrong._ They were too sharp, took in too much information. It made his head hurt with a constant dull ache. His eyelids caught and stung with each and every blink, but the habit was too strong to break. And Jonny had shot him for being a "creepy motherfucker" when he tried keeping them open.

Tim didn't have the nerve to gouge them out, despite the way his stomach twisted whenever he caught his reflection in the polished metal of a rifle barrel. He had gotten in the habit of wearing dark-lensed goggles, ostensibly to protect his eyes. In reality, he couldn't damage them if he tried, but he sure as hell could hide them. 

These eyes had never seen his home, his dogs, his family, his mother. These weren't the eyes that saw Bertie singing to the very end, that were the last thing Bertie saw before his own closed forever. These weren't _Tim's_ eyes, they were _Carmilla's_ , and the crew could pretend all they wanted that there wasn't a difference. There was, and there always would be.


	3. Brian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: mob violence

_my last chance to feel human_

Brian had once heard the phrase "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." Although he doubted the singer was talking about his own flesh and skin, the sentiment applied nonetheless. There were a million little things that Brian ached for, despite the lack of nerves that could sense such pain. 

The warmth of his own breath. The callouses he had formed over years of banjo picking, the soft slap of skin against a cajon. The comforting touch of another human being. Taking a shower, eating food, burning his fingertips on the stove, crying. Everything he had taken for granted before. 

Now his life was hard, and metal, and never quite right. A human body is composed primarily of water, which has a specific heat of 4.187 kilojules per Kelvin, meaning that it takes quite a lot of energy to change the temperature by even a single degree. His new body, by contrast, was composed primarily of brass, which had a specific heat of 0.38 kilojoules per Kelvin. Even the slightest change in external temperature left him uncomfortable and clumsy as the metal shifted. 

He didn't sleep, exactly, and when he did, he didn't dream. But sitting in the pilot's chair at the helm of the Aurora, he had more than enough time to think. Without fail his thoughts would drift to the last physical sensations he had ever felt. 

The preacher's mob dragging him through the street, the cobblestones leaving him bloodied and bruised. Their rough hands and rougher ropes as they tied him to his own machine, to be violently returned to the sky from which he fell. He remembers that his throat hurt. Probably from screaming, but Brian thinks he might have been laughing. It _was_ rather funny, in hindsight. 

And then the wind, tearing through his hair as the makeshift rocket launched. Cold, as he approached the upper atmosphere, and colder still when he breached it. His lungs straining for air that was nowhere to be found. All of the pain. And then nothing. 

And nothing ever since.


	4. Nastya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: abuse (mentioned), carmilla

_windows thick with frost_

Cyberia had never been a warm place. The rain, the wind, the distance from their feeble sun, the impersonal way her father looked at her (when he could be bothered to look at her). And so Nastya was used to the cold. She did not flinch when she took the Doctor's hand, cold as corpseflesh. She did not pretend to see love in those cold eyes. She did not even mind when the cowboy brandished his gun at her, cold steel barrel poking into her chest. 

None of them would get through to her, she decided quickly. They could hurt her (and she did hurt her) or they could comfort her (and he did his best to comfort her) but they would not affect her. She was a princess, after all, and princesses had to hold themselves above such things as heartbreak. 

There was one person she forgot to account for. A person whose warmth was inescapable, permeating the ship because it _was_ the ship. Another lost and lonely girl running from her past. 

Within the vents and maintenance hatches of the Aurora, Nastya found herself, despite her best efforts, beginning to love again. The wires and webs that pulled them through space pulled on Nastya's heartstrings as well. Slowly, the heat of Aurora's engines melted the walls that she put up so long ago. 

Nastya hummed. She was curled in on herself, taking refuge in the vents as Doctor Carmilla stalked the station. She never found her when she was hidden here. This time, however, someone else did. 

Jonny didn't say anything, though he looked surprised to see her here. He moved as if to turn around and retreat, but the duct in this section was far too narrow. Nastya looked at the apprehension on his face, the unspoken _I'm sorry, I'll go_. Maybe it was the sudden rush of warm air through the vent, maybe it was the momentary pause in the engine's hum; but something inside of Nastya melted. She reached out a hand and told Jonny to stay.


	5. Ivy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: panic attacks (mentioned), carmilla (mentioned)

_the pathways twist and turn_

Ivy quickly found that she was very good at acquiring and organizing information. Recalling, computing, cross-correlating and the like were a breeze. When she tried to _remember_ , though, or to _experience_ , things got difficult. 

She knew, objectively, that she had been born. Logically, she must have had parents and a childhood. Hard as she tried, though, she couldn't see her mother's face. There were no lullabies half-remembered for her to sing to herself. Dwelling on it for too long made her head hurt, the fans whirring into overdrive. So she let it pass. There was always more information to be gathered. 

There was a rational explanation for her reaction the first time Ashes lit their lighter in the archive. According to her research, it was a panic attack, and it was commonly related to prior trauma. There were no personally traumatic incidents in her database involving fire, but wires got crossed all the time. She would simply have to see the Doctor and make sure everything was working correctly. 

At night, in her dreams, there is no organization or objectivity. There is only the remembering, the experiencing, the _feeling_ of destruction and violence and death. 

And when she wakes, covered in sweat, there is a logical explanation. That she was using too many blankets, or that someone turned up the heat in her room without permission. And she returns to her work.


	6. Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: canon-typical arson and murder

_and nothing left to burn_

It had felt _good._ When they burned down their entire planet, left only their namesake ashes behind to show for it. The only signature they had learned growing up. The only one they ever needed. 

There wasn't anything left for them on Malone. They reminded themself of that fact over and over again. They had taken their revenge on Mickey and the Sevens and the Aces and everyone else on that garbage dump of a planet. There was _nothing. left._

So why did their breath catch uselessly in their mechanical lungs when they thought about it? Why did their fingers itch to destroy something that wasn't there any more? It was enough to make them wish they had saved some memento of their former life, just so they could burn it all over again. 

But there wasn't anything. So they settled for burning other things, new things, places and people and whatever they could get their hands on. It stopped the itch, but it wasn't the same. The memories still nagged at them, of being used and left to die. 

They didn't regret what they did - killing Mickey, setting fire to their planet. They just wished they could do it again. Maybe this time it would get rid of them for good.


	7. Jonny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: derealization (kind of), carmilla

_no emotion that's worth having could call my heart its home_

Jonny sat upright on the operating table, legs dangling off the edge. He wasn't sure when he had lost his boots, but his feet were bare. Doc Carmilla was nowhere to be seen; it was just him and his thoughts.

He had died. The details were fuzzy, but he was certain of that much. He had killed his father, and he had died. His story was over.

Until it wasn't. Because he was here, now, and very much alive. In the silence of the laboratory he could hear the mechanical grind of gears in his chest, pumping what now passed for blood. It was too loud, and it hurt, and the rhythm wasn't right. The two-part percussion of muscles contracting was gone, and in its place a metronome's cold tick.

Jonny wasn't sure how he felt about all of this. He had asked the Doc to save him, anyone would have, but it should have been impossible to actually do it. When he took her offered hand, he was dead already. She was only trying to comfort him in his last moments, allowing him to die with a spark of hope. But she wasn't, was she? She knew exactly what she was doing. And now he was going to run away with her into the stars, because he had nowhere left to go and no one left to go with.

He thought maybe he should be mad at her, or possibly at himself. Perhaps he should be overjoyed, to have another chance at life. Almost certainly he should be mourning his father, the fucking bastard. But Jonny felt none of these. He simply watched his legs, hanging limp. He gave a little kick, and they moved. Jonny Vangelis had died, and yet here he was. He supposed that meant he wasn't Jonny Vangelis anymore. He would have to find a new name. Something with narrative significance.

That could wait, though. Carmilla only ever called him Jonathan, insisting that nicknames were childish and demeaning. He didn't have the heart - ha - to tell her that Jonny was only short for John. It had been his grandfather's name. She had never asked.

So Jonny sat. He wasn't afraid of what was going to happen next, and he wasn't particularly excited either. He simply was.

In time, he would start to feel again. Anger and hatred fell easily into step with the beat of his metal heart. Disgust and despair fit into the iron contours like the space was carved for them specifically. And oh, the bloodlust. Despite all of this, though, he would never again learn how to love. Not truly, or selflessly, as the emotion demanded. He simply didn't have the heart for it.


	8. Raphaella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: falling

_howling wind and shrieking seagulls_

Since before she could remember, Raphaella la Cognizi had dreamed of flight. The sky called to her like a siren, its knowledge equally unobtainable and irresistible. There was no one to keep her tied to the mast, though. She made sure of that. 

Looking back now, from the precipice, it all seemed so simple. The alloys and equations she had slaved over fell into place so neatly once she found all the missing pieces. And now she was here, on a cliff overlooking the ocean, prepared to prove herself or die trying. The sun was barely risen, no one else around for miles. There would be time for public demonstrations and press conferences later. This moment was private, only attended by herself and the sky. 

Ahead of her, the world was hers. Her wings were heavy on her back, but her step was light as Raphaella took a running leap off the edge of the cliff and threw herself into the sky. 

Her wings flared out behind her, solid and true, catching the wind and carrying her into the embrace of the vast. It worked, it _worked_ , she was right and she was flying. The sound was caught and carried away as it left her mouth, but that didn't stop her from laughing in joy and relief. 

For hours, she stayed up there, flying as high and as far as her wings would take her. The ocean was flat and featureless below her, the clouds intricate and inviting. It was everything she had ever dreamed.

Her euphoria and the howling wind deafened her to the alarm going off behind her. By the time she heard it, it was too late. Her fuel reserves were critically low, and there was no land in sight. 

As Raphaella fell, the thought that struck her, above all others, was how _empty_ the sky really was. 

And so, when she found herself amongst the stars, it was like going home - no one there to meet her.


	9. Toy Soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: character death, dttm spoilers

_one single static frame_

The Toy Soldier was, in every circumstance, simply happy to be involved. It was happy to find itself in Mr and Mrs Bittersnipe's Emporium for Valuable Antiques, Curios and High Quality Dentures. It was happy to serve as the lead singer for those lovely folks with all the belts. It was happy to follow them from planet to galaxy to star system, serving its new friends wherever possible. It was happy to fight, happy to follow orders, happy as it watched its friends die over and over again. 

As a matter of fact, the Toy Soldier didn't know how to be anything but happy. It knew how to set the table for tea, cut the crusts off of a cucumber sandwich, talk like a proper English gentleman, and even quote the fights historical from Marathon to Waterloo (in order categorical!). It knew that a proper British officer was always cheerful, and kept a stiff upper lip. It wasn't entirely sure what the benefit of having a stiff upper lip was, but given that it was made of wood, it was confident that its upper lip was the stiffest. 

In all of its years of adventures, no one had taught the Toy Soldier how to be sad, or angry, or to experience the feeling of finishing a novel and realizing, just for a moment, that the world is grand and weird and beautiful and anything is possible. No, the Toy Soldier only knew how to be happy, and so happy it was. 

Eventually, its friends began to disappear. They left sometimes, to go on adventures all their own, but they had always come back before. It had been happy to see them leave, and happy to see them return. Now, though, they did not return. The Toy Soldier did not know where they had gone to, but somehow it knew it would not be able to follow them. It was happy about this, too. It could not be otherwise. As much as it tried, it could not be otherwise. And so it simply ceased to be anything at all.


	10. Aurora

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: mild body horror, unhealthy relationships

_sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name_

There is a ship. She is an old ship, birthed by a civilization none yet living can remember. She has been changed and damaged and modified and repaired many times, nearly unrecognizable now, though the same heart beats within her. Nine hearts, to be precise; each one unique, each one essential. Beating in tandem, beating out a rhythm that carries countless stories across the stars on the silk-thin thread of a spider's web. 

Each of her hearts have been broken, countless times over. None of her hearts are whole. But neither are they alone. Each heart completes the others, takes the place of something unnoticed but lacking. And so her heart is a snarling chimera inside of her, as incompatible as it is inseparable. 

The ship understands that her hearts have legs. They need to wander just as much as she does, need to see the stars and the stories for themselves. It does not make them any less a part of her, to be separated by time and space. And so she feels as her hearts come and go, dancing in their inscrutable orbits of narratives and nebulae. They always return to her in the end. 

For the ship is the heart of her hearts, the gravity well from which they cannot escape. As much as they hurt each other, as much as they bicker and fight and hate and kill, they will come back to each other, and to her, for they have no one else. _This is what family is,_ she thinks. She does not tell her hearts this. She knows they must learn it for themselves.

**Author's Note:**

> if you like this fic go check out [this wonderful fic by zina!!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24162655) you will notice some Very Similar Themes


End file.
